The Firing Squad

Timothy A. Chey was in Singapore in April 2015 when the news reported that Indonesia had executed eight convicted drug smugglers by firing squad on the prison island of Nusakambangan. Witnesses said they walked out to the clearing singing 'Amazing Grace', and one of them, the Australian Andrew Chan, had become a pastor on death row. That's where 'The Firing Squad' comes from. Chey wrote and directed it, with mostly invented characters standing in for the real men.

Peter Lone lives very well off cocaine. He's spent years moving drugs around the world, he drives a Ferrari, flies by private jet and has a fiancée. His luck runs out in Indonesia, a country where drug trafficking costs you your life: he's arrested, and a court sentences him to death by firing squad.

The prison belongs to Captain Tanu, a cruel warden who gives no one an inch. Inside, Peter meets Pastor Lynbrook, another condemned man who preaches to the inmates and won't stop working on him, however little Peter wants to hear about God. There's also Samuel Wilson, a prisoner who claims to have a way out, and Miriam, a young woman who visits with a group from her church. Meanwhile the pardon doesn't come, and the execution date stays where it is.

Peter was the first lead role for the Australian actor James Barrington. Alongside him are Kevin Sorbo, the atheist professor in 'God's Not Dead', as Lynbrook, and Cuba Gooding Jr., Oscar winner for 'Jerry Maguire', as Samuel. Gooding had already starred in 'Freedom', which Chey wrote and produced. Madeline Anderson, Tupua Ainu'u and Eric Roberts, as Peter's lawyer, round out the cast. The shoot took two months on a budget of under five million dollars, in an abandoned Florida prison an hour from the director's home. It's also the first scripted feature from Epoch Studios, the film arm of The Epoch Times group.

It opened in the United States on 2 August 2024 and came ninth on its first weekend, with $893,100 from 810 cinemas, finishing on a little over $1.7 million. Christian outlets liked it and singled out the ending. The rest of the critics, and there weren't many, went after the acting, the clumsy dialogue and an Indonesian prison that never looks real. Chey and Sorbo teamed up again for 'The Flood', with Sorbo as Noah.

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